We quickly settled into a steady routine with the watch system. On my watch I got delegated to do all the cooking, the upside was that I did not have to do the washing up. There was quite volume of washing up with twelve of us on board.
Whilst we did have an autopilot, we still had to hand steer for extended periods as the autopilot could not cope when the boat was rolling heavily.
At one point at night in heavy rain there was so much water on my glasses I had to take them off, as I could not even see the chart plotter display on the wheel pedestal. I found the steering quite hard as it was low geared, so you have to turn the fairly small wheel through almost full turns to keep the boat on track. This made it hard to get a rhythm to avoid over steering.
With a deadline to reach the Azores for the changeover so people could make their flights home and to meet new crew arriving, we did a mixture of sailing and motor sailing to maintain an average speed. We did track further East than the shortest route to make the best of the weather and wind direction.
Progress was measured against the UK and Europe to the east of us. We were seeing almost no traffic. A UK registered yacht passed going the opposite direction, but we did not actually see him just tracked him on the AIS.
After four days closed hauled there was a wind shift to the wind being behind us, we were trying to sail about with the wind at about 30° to the beam. The skipper decided to drop the staysail and raise the Yankee sail, this took 5 people on the foredeck nearly 50 minutes, the big sails being handled manually.
Visibility improved with the wind shift and the weather was now drier and brighter.
On Saturday 7th September I noted that we had passed the Isle of Man at 3am, we were 540 miles west of the Isle of Man and 220 miles from the Irish coast.
It was beginning to feel warmer.
We still had to be very cautious with our use of fresh water, no showers no wet shaving, and when doing the washing up had to strive to use as little water as possible. You can get a very clean with a wet wipe wash. Into the shower and a few wet wipes later you feel a whole letter better, but there was nothing you could do about washing your hair.
The Crew had access to Starlink which gave them the internet to get weather data from Windy.com.
Sunday 8 September my diary notes the wind came around on to the beam and we put up the stay sail as well. This was followed by a few really good days of sailing on a broad reach in 15kn-20kn of wind and getting speeds of up to 10kns in gust but constantly over 8kns.
We were regularly seeing, whales, and dolphins but always at some distance from the boat.
Food had to be managed so that it was used in date order, and we did not run short. Sometimes you had to get creative with what was available. I managed to cook, a very good pork tenderloin on a bed of beetroot. It worked very well considering I just made the recipe up!
I only had one slight disaster whilst cooking, with 12 of us the quantity of rice needed for one meal was quite significant and to conserve water usage we did not boil a huge plan of water. Instead, we used a different method adding only the quantity of water needed to cook the rice. Unfortunately, I got the water quantity wrong, and we ended up with soggy rice. But everyone was too grateful for the food to complain.
With different people cooking every day, we did at least end up with a variety of food.
We were anticipating more traffic once we passed the southern tip of Ireland, and we did see a few ships but still not many.
At one point I was on watch looking at the chart plotter and we were 600 miles west of France 600 miles northwest of Cape Finisterre (northern tip of Spain) and 400 miles north of Lands End in England. A long way from anywhere ! For context at those distances you are far beyond the range of helicopters in an emergency.
The boat was dry, no alcohol on board. At one point one of the Czech crew was found looking at a photo of a glass of beer on his phone. Beer as a spectator sport! We were all looking forward to a cold beer in Ponta Delgada particularly as the weather got much hotter!
Tuesday 10th September we still had 600 miles to Ponta Delgada in the Azores, our destination with an ETA of Saturday.
It was now very much warmer and we able to open hatches to get more fresh air through the boat. It was very warm on deck. One of the other watches saw a fishing boat our first actually sighting of a vessel in days.
We were now through most of the fresh food, so we had to get creative with the canned store cupboards. I managed to make a stew with tinned tuna, tinned tomatoes, capers and tinned mushrooms with dried herbs and spices to add flavours. It worked very well.
Waste was an issue on the boat, food scraps were put overboard, but all other rubbish had to be stored in two barrels on deck for disposal in port. Cans had to be crushed; boxes flattened etc. These barrels were midships and tied to the stanchions on either side. As soon as we got to Ponda Delgada these were taken ashore as they were beginning to smell badly.
I was given the opportunity of doing a noon fix with a sextant known as astro navigation. Before the trip I had not done any studying to understand the theory. Astro navigation using a sextant is still considered an essential skill so that if your electronics fail on an ocean passage you have a backup.
On Thursday 12 September we were still on our first tank of fresh water (three in total) so had sufficient fresh water for everyone to have a shower, pure bliss! These still had to be short showers and after 10 days my hair was so dirty that when I put shampoo on it did very little. It was still not very clean after two washes but very much better.
It was now very warm even at night, so you did not need your sleeping bag. It was more a case of trying to keep cool enough to sleep.
The wind died at this point, so we were forced to lower all the sails and continue under motor. There was so little wind we could not even motor sail, the sails were just flapping.
We passed a sea turtle swimming the other way.
On the Friday my beard was annoying me so much I went and shaved it off! I was glad I had had brought a razor with me as it would be another few days before I was home to shave otherwise.
We were approaching the coast by Saturday morning; we had to pass down the western side of Sao Miguel Island and then turn east as our destination Ponta Delgada is on the southern side of the Island and we had approached from the north. This was our first waypoint after leaving the Icelandic coast was the turning point after 1500 miles.
We arrived in Ponta Delgada around noon, and I was on watch so helmed the last leg towards the breakwater before the skipper took over to get us onto the fuel birth. The first job was to fill the fuel tanks ready for the next leg down to the Cape Verde Islands. One of the crew Steve was staying on for this leg and then leaving the boat in Salvador, Brazil three weeks later.
Whilst we were fuelling everybody else suddenly disappeared, what I had not realised was that there was a bar just out sight from the fuel berth and they had all headed for their first beer since Iceland! We took on more than 1700l of fuel.
We had sailed a total of nearly 1,600 miles in 12 days and my trip was a total of 2,225 miles. Our average speed was only 5-6knts I do have the full track of the Iceland-Azores leg as I noted down the noon and midnight fixes from the log.
I had a shower on shore in the marina and then stopped in a nearby bar for a beer to be joined by a few of the others. A table had been booked for dinner so that we could all have a final meal together as a few people were leaving the following day.